The Enhancement of Wound Healing With Human Skin Allograft

Wound healing is a complex and organized response by the body to tissue injury and loss of integrity. Many factors influence the progress of wound healing, but none so profoundly as whether the wound is open or closed. A closed wound heals generally undisturbed along a well-established temporal sequence of the normal repair process described by Schilling. 26 In the absence of foreign bodies and microorganisms, inflammation, edema, and subsequent scar formation are minimal. An open wound, on the other hand, is affected by a host of outside influences that invariably prolong the wound healing process and result in more inflammation, edema, and scarring than normal closed wound healing. Whereas clean incisional wounds can be easily closed, contaminated wounds, wounds with tissue loss that cannot be closed primarily, and chronic wounds are generally not closed and suffer the effects of being open. It follows that wound healing would be enhanced if these wounds could be closed. This article describes how skin allograft biologic dressings bestow the benefits of wound closure on those wounds frequently not closed in practice.